England Rugby League will be heading back to Headingley this autumn to round off their three Test series against Australia. The series was announced on Wednesday morning, with England taking on the Kangaroos in a series for the first time since 2003.
Wembley will host the first Test, with the national stadium expected to welcome a huge crowd for the clash. Both sides will then head to Liverpool to play the first rugby league game at the new Everton Stadium.
The stadium on the Liverpool waterfront is complete and boasts a capacity of 52,888 with Everton set to make the move there at the end of the current Premier League season. The last Test will be played at Headingley, which is a more familiar venue for rugby league fans, of course, but only holds a maximum of 19,700 supporters.
There are bigger venues in the city of Leeds and across Yorkshire and the north east and some supporters have questioned why a larger stadium hasn’t been used for the third and final game of the series.
RL Commercial managing director Rhodri Jones and England head coach Shaun Wane have both moved to explain the decision to take the game to the home of Leeds Rhinos, though, with the ground being described as the best Super League has to offer.
“I guess it goes back to that venue mix,” Jones said when asked by Serious About RL about the selection process behind Headingley. “We looked at London and the north west and Yorkshire/north east.
“I think what we’ve found is we’ve got the balance between the iconic venue in London, the new venue in the north west, both 50,000+ stadia which gave us flexibility for Yorkshire and the north east.
“Headingley is steeped in history both from a rugby league perspective but also cricket perspective as to what has happened there. There’s a little bit of trying to help Shaun as well in terms of Headingley has been successful over the last two series in terms of finishing off on a high.
“Leeds as a city, Leeds is well supported, it’s the best ground in Super League. That’s why we’re going to Headingley.”
Wane added: “Can I just say in support of that, we played there in the second Test against Samoa and third Test against Tonga and we were there on Saturday with the Wigan team.
“The atmosphere, what Gary (Hetherington) and Paul Caddick have done there, the atmosphere is second to none. It’s fantastic. The pitch is great, the atmosphere is fantastic and how they looked after my team for those second and third Tests was impeccable.
“The staff behind the scenes, the detail they go into is fantastic. I 100 per cent get it and I’m really happy the third Test is there.”
Of course, reports of the series being held in England have been circulating since last Autumn, with England originally being due to head Down Under and Jones has now spoken about that process.
“For all intents and purposes we were going to Australia until probably October or early November when we had the conversation with Peter (V’landys) and Andrew (Abdo) down in Australia and we put a request in for them to consider swapping the Ashes tour,” Jones added.
“They responded positively at which point it was up to us to pull it together and try and make it work.
“We we went through a period of assessing and working out venues. London is obviously one of the things we considered, what is the right mix of venues and who’s available and at what cost, what do the economics look like and how many tickets can we sell while also negotiating with the ARLC around how many people in the tour party and what does their tour look like.
“We have to bring that all together and I think it was early January when we were 99.99 per cent secure in terms of the three venues. We’ve been having conversations with the broadcaster at the same time.
“I’d say by the end of the January we were in a relatively positive place. There was still a bit of toing and froing with Australia and we set our target to announce on the Sunday after Las Vegas.
“There was a slight delay at the RLPA end in terms of getting approval from them and players playing a number of games and the tour schedule, aligned with the Pacific Championships at the same time. At the end of last week we were in a position to pin down the dates. It’s ended up being five months of work.”
Eric T Cat
March 26, 2025 at 5:32 pm
Headingley isn’t in the top three, arguably top 5 stadiums in Super League. It’s a mishmash of styles, with some new parts, but other decrepit spots that are decades out of date. The MKM Stadium in Hull, Huddersfield, and Wigan, are all superior to Headingley. While not as large, but newer and more better grounds you have St Helens, Salford, Leigh, and Warrington. That only leaves Castleford, Wakefield, Hull KR, and Catalans. Catalans are obviously a non starter, Rovers ground isn’t big enough although the atmosphere might intimidate the Australians, and Wajefield and Castleford aren’t big enough. Headingley stinks of an internal politics with some individuals seeming to exert undue influence.